Whistleblower Edward Snowden received help from a National Surveillance Agency civilian employee to get access to classified documents of the security organisation.

According to NBC News, the NSA employee resigned after his security clearance was taken back. Also, an active US military member and a contractor were denied access to the NSA facilities after officials found that they helped Snowden. Their status is currently under review, according to a memo released Feb. 10 to main Congress members.

The memo further states the NSA civilian confessed to the FBI special agents that he let the 30-year-old whistleblower use his Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificate to access classified information on NSANet.

"Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information," the memo signed by Ethan Bauman, the NSA's director of legislative affairs, stated.

Furthermore, it stated that the employee was not aware of Snowden's purpose for using his access key and what details he unearthed. However, his clearance was revoked in November after it was found that he "failed to comply with security obligations."

In November, Reuters reported that nearly 20 to 25 NSA workers at the Hawaii spy base disclosed their login information to Snowden. This allowed him to get some of the documents that were leaked to the media. Those involved in sharing their credentials were later interrogated and removed from their assignments.

Recently, it was reported that Snowden used inexpensive software to hack the NSA networks. According to the senior officials, he used the 'web crawler' software to search, index and back up a website and get the secret information from the systems. Snowden is holed up in Russia.